EatDrinkFilms requested a few recipes from renowned chef Jeremiah Tower and he sent his “Duck with Endive Salad” and “Consommé Marijuana” to tie in with the theatrical release of Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent opening at theaters across the U.S. in late April and early May. Current scheduled openings are here.  Read Gaetano Kazuo Maida’ review here.

Tower’s book Start with Fire  has been newly revised and reissued. 

Moria Hodgson reported in the New York Times (July, 10, 1988). “Jeremiah Tower of Stars in San Francisco serves grilled duck legs with endive salad. Any bitter greens will do. ”The richness of the duck is best balanced with the clean, biting taste of curly endive, Belgian endive, radicchio, escarole, watercress, rocket (arugula) and others,” he says in his book, ”New American Classics” . ”The combination of nut oils like hazelnut or walnut with the various forms of endive is very special and works well with the duck.”

At Harvard where Tower earned undergraduate and graduate degrees, he became popular for mixing his fine cooking techniques with illicit substances. In John Birdsall’s Eater article he explains about the next recipe, possibly served at one of his Gertrude Stein–Alice B. Toklas dinners:

“Tower goes on to describe a menu from a dinner he threw in 1969, when he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a table of a couple of close friends and a visiting poet. He calls it decadent: vodka from the freezer (an enduring Tower motif) with pirozhki, prosciutto and figs, and then “consommé marijuana,” weed steeped in rich chicken stock, positioned in the menu so that its psychoactive effects are timed to kick in at just the right moment, after roast beef paired with a second-growth Bordeaux, followed by watercress salad. The pot consommé takes “forty-five minutes to reach the brain,” Tower writes, “by which time (as the menu planned) we were on to dessert, tasting strawberries and cream as we’d never tasted them before.”

Watch a special edition of “Eat My Shorts” featuring videos of Tower preparing some of his classic dishes, all accompanied by more recipes.

Many classic recipes are available in Jeremiah Tower’s cookbooks available at Omnivore Books in San Francisco or at your local bookstore.  If you cannot find them there try online at Indiebound or Amazon.

Jeremiah Tower on Cookbooks He Just Can’t Get Rid Of by Paula Forbes at Eater.